Who needs the NSA? Your dishwasher is already watching every move you make

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In the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s disclosures about alleged surveillance programs by the National Security Agency, it’s tempting to undertake a wholesale rethink of your online behavior, get a burner phone and install new e-mail tools, or just cut the cord entirely—except even that may not keep away the gaze of surveilling parties. Just living in a modern, equipped home is enough to create multiple peepholes for the government, or even foreign hackers, to figure out what you’re doing.

Last spring, then-CIA director David Petraeus touted the opportunities that the so-called internet of things, from embedded sensors in cars to radio tags on consumer products to a house full of smart appliances such as connected dishwashers and clothes dryers, would bring for collecting data and monitoring of targets.

This ability to tap and monitor internet-connected devices is, of course, made even easier through the flood of smartphone apps that allow us to control these devices remotely—adding a phone into the mix provides lots of valuable location and call data, along with expanding the loop of connectivity among the user, the devices, and the surveilling party. The more you light up, the more “they” can see.

While this admission of interest set hair on fire across the realm of conspiracy theorists at the time (and looks increasingly sinister now), it doesn’t even paint the extent to which even the relatively unwired home can be listened to. Some groups have claimed for years, for example, that our lowly, ink-sucking computer printers are betraying us, even without an internet connection—through the use of supposed secret microdots that allow a printed item to be traced back to its printer of origin.

This research was based on data reported by a so-called smart meter, which monitors electricity usage and shares that data with the consumer as well as the power company, but that step simply made it easier to collect remotely. In 2011, it was revealed that Chinese hackers had attacked the US Chamber of Commerce, including a thermostat in a townhouse owned by the Chamber, which, when checked, reported a connection to an IP address in China.

Privacy nuts and smart meters go way back in a battle that has been well documented, but recent events add fuel to the already burning fire. They also happen do so at a time when we are being sold an entirely new realm of smart devices, full-featured home security, and smartphone apps that control everything under the sun. Fast forward to the next generation of surveillance.